Havok Releases Havok FX, Particles For Your Next Gen Needs, Rainbow Six Siege is First To Adopt

04. Jun, 2015

In other Rainbow Six Siege news today, Havok announced that the in production shooter is the first game to feature their new CPU-driven software product for next gen debris simulation, Havok FX.

From their press release:

Through its focus on CPU processing, Havok FX offers a lightweight, cross platform solution to creating dynamic and persistent particle effects across all next gen platforms and PCs. Shrapnel, dust, goo, debris and smoke will interact with both the player and the environment, increasing the fidelity of the game world while also offering designers the ability to deliver gameplay altering effects. Artists now have the freedom to create the richer and more dynamic environments at a scale that modern AAA gaming demands.

In somewhat simpler terms, Havok FX allows Ubisoft Montreal to more easily incorporate effects and physics that make all the little bits and pieces of stuff breaking off of the environments behave more like you would expect them to were the action of Siege to be happening in real life. “Havok FX brought all we needed to push the realism of Realblast, our procedural destruction engine, to a whole new level. With each explosion you see debris, shrapnel and fragments all flying through the environment and reacting dynamically, making each assault even more tense and realistic,” says Mark Besner, Lead Programmer at Ubisoft Montreal.

Like so. This is way easier to make when Ubisoft Montreal has Havok FX, developed at a whole other company, to do the heavy lifting.

Brian Waddle, Havok’s Vice President of Sales & Marketing, says that Havok FX takes advantage of the huge upgrade in power we’ve seen in the latest console transition and believes that with Rainbow Six Siege as a showcase for next generation particle physics and effects, gamers will accept no less from future titles and developers will have to answer that demand.

A student of games, I play a bit of everything because I like to see what’s out there. Nothing better than first hand experience when it comes to knowing about games. Current game obsession: Anything MOBA (Paragon, Battleborn, Heroes of the Storm), except, ironically, the most popular ones, LoL and DOTA2.